Mayor Cicilline last night unveiled a proposal to slow the boomlet of demolition in Providence.
From Dan Barbarisi:
Cicilline’s proposals are intended to prevent developers from forcing “demolition by neglect,” the practice of allowing a property to deteriorate so that emergency demolition is necessary. Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Jerome F. Williams accused Carpionato Properties Inc. of attempting exactly that at the Fruit and Produce Warehouse building.
Cicilline announced two ordinances that he said could prevent situations like that at the produce warehouse from happening again.
One would empower the city to go onto a deteriorating, neglected property, do necessary repairs and pay for it by putting a lien on the property.
Yet isn't this a bit late in the game?
Hanging over the evening [of PPS' annual meeting] were the recent start of demolition Monday at the Providence Fruit and Produce Warehouse Co. building, and a judge’s decision Wednesday to reopen the case of the half-destroyed Grove Street School to question the city’s building official as to why he did not call for emergency demolition of that building. Earlier in the year, the police and fire station in La Salle Square was knocked down using an emergency demolition permit, and demolition was approved for the former Louttit Laundry building on Cranston Street.
A day earlier, David Brussat said that since Providence Fruit was ugly, its demoltion was a good thing. Meanwhile, over at Anchor, Marc says:
I wonder if a game was being played from the start to keep the [warehouse] price down based on a pretense of preservation that would ultimately prove unenforceable because the legal language guaranteeing preservation was mysteriously left out of the final deal.
Good question.
And at Greater City: Providence, Jef has this painful photo of the Grove Street School:
